The Goals

The Approach

Use a measurement plan to understand behavior and identify merchandising opportunities

The Results

Found digital marketing performance throughout customer lifecycle

Insight into customer journey and channel attribution

28% year-over-year lift in conversion rate

Matalan looks for easy implementation and integration

Matalan is a leading family clothing retailer in the UK whose website operates as an extension of the brick-and-mortar store. The company offers the entire product catalog to digital customers and generates millions of web visits per month.

To optimize online marketing efforts, Matalan wanted an analytics platform with a simple implementation process, user-friendly interface, and robust set of easy-to-use tools. The company hoped to enable quick access to useful insights, and to deliver consistent, reliable information that would inform decision-making.

Loyalty in one fell swoop

Matalan turned to the interactive marketing agency Morpheus Media for guidance, and they recommended Google Analytics 360. “The transition has been quite smooth,” says Matalan Web Analyst Jodie O’Mara. “The team at Morpheus was very knowledgeable and helped us define the metrics and goals that we want to look at, and on an ongoing basis they help us understand all the areas of Analytics 360 that we can use to get the right information.”

Matalan discovered immediate benefits. According to Multi-Channel Marketing Director Lee Pinnington, the company can now perform analyses integrating more dimensions than ever before. Turnaround times are much faster, too.

The ease of getting to digital information, and the transparency Google gives us, allows us to view more criteria — whether that be sources of traffic, hourly sales, conversions, or device journeys. With Google, we’re getting actionable insights,&nbsp whereas before we were just getting a lot of information. That helps us target our development internally, and we can focus on the things that really make a difference.

Lee Pinnington,
Multi-Channel Marketing Director,
Matalan

Custom fitting resources

Using Analytics 360 has made a big impact on the company. Matalan particularly appreciates the ability to build up to 50 custom variables, rapidly obtain unsampled digital information, and access that information within four hours. The company was interested in identifying products that users were looking for but could not find, reviewing “Forgot Password” and checkout funnels, and discovering which products were not getting the visibility they needed.

“We can build custom reports that are specific to our business needs, which makes processing large volumes of data really accurate and easy,” Jodie says. “And the option to use unsampled data has been really good because you get a quick snapshot by looking at the reports. Obviously if you want to analyze the insights in a bit more depth, then you can extract and process it. Analytics 360 makes it quicker, clearer, and more precise when we’re sharing it with the wider business.”

Rapidly distributing information throughout the organization is critical in Matalan’s competitive sector. “One of the great things about Analytics 360 is that the processing power allows us to make real-time decisions on things that can impact us that day,” she says.

Lee agrees, and explains, “The move to Analytics 360 means we are able to unlock digital information that we can trust with minimal resources. UK retailers are very elastic businesses — we need to make decisions to target our user base quickly with promotional activity to grow our sales.”

Seamless wins

Matalan was already a user of Campaign Manager, an ad management and ad serving solution. Because Analytics 360 and Campaign Manager can be seamlessly integrated, Matalan was able to turbocharge its analytics efforts through all platforms and devices.

“This gives us the ability to see the hidden power of different channels,” says Online Search and Affiliate Assistant Adam McCann. “One of the most interesting things about the Campaign Manager integration has been around assisted conversions. It’s really helpful to be able to see one channel that might not be a heavy hitter in terms of revenue or traffic have an impact in creating a conversion on another channel.”

Holistic understanding is vital for the Matalan team to make informed decisions about optimizing digital spend, identify gaps in digital marketing, and deliver real benefits to the bottom line. Overall, the implementation of Analytics 360 has enabled easy reporting on a granular level, providing each department within Matalan direct, user-friendly access to relevant metrics.

Since implementation, Matalan has been able to optimize digital marketing efforts and provide users with a better site experience. The company experienced significant growth in revenue and site visits, and a 28% increase in conversion rate year over year.